Thousands of U.S. citizens, Green Card holders and Afghans eligible for an airlift have been left behind, with negotiations ongoing about how to secure their safe exit from the country. The scenes prompted critics to lash out at President Joe Biden, who defended his actions in a speech made Tuesday night. Meanwhile, the Taliban continue round-the-clock talks to form a new government.
The live updates for this blog have ended.
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Pope Francis criticizes ’enforcing its own values on others’ UK embassy told Afghans to go to Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate hours before bomb attack Putin says U. S. achieved ‘zero’ in Afghanistan
The new facility will “allow the Border Guard Service to deploy forces more quickly to border areas in response to threats,” the announcement said.
When the project is finished, it will provide housing for a border guard detachment and their families in Ayvoj.
U.S. Ambassador John Pommersheim said “this border detachment project is just another example of our shared commitment to the security and sovereignty of Tajikistan and Central Asia.”
He addressed the U.S. military’s “dealings” with the Taliban at the airfield in Kabul and roughly over the past year “or so.”
“In war, you do what you must in order to reduce risk to mission and force,” Milley said, adding “not necessarily what you want to do.”
Moments before, Austin said “we were working with the Taliban on a very narrow set of issues, and it was just that, to get as many people out as we possibly could,” referencing the U.S. evacuation efforts in Afghanistan.
He added that it is hard to predict where the situation with the Taliban will go as they now have control over Afghanistan.
“There’s never been a single operation that I’ve been involved in where we didn’t discover that there’s something that we could have done better or more efficiently or more effectively. No operation is perfect,” Austin also said during the briefing.
“How we got to this moment in Afghanistan will be analyzed and studied for years to come,” the general added.
He mentioned the deaths of the 13 U.S. servicemen who died in a suicide bomb attack at the Kabul airport and said “They literally gave their tomorrows for people they never knew.”
Austin also spoke on their deaths and said “13 of our very best paid the ultimate price,” adding that “many of them were too young to personally remember the 9/11 attacks.”
“I know that these have been difficult days for many of us and as we look back as a nation on the war in Afghanistan, I hope that we will all do so with thoughtfulness and respect,” Austin said during the briefing.
“I will always be proud of the part that we played in this war,” he added.
As the U.S. was preparing for the exit of all American forces from Afghanistan that occurred Monday, the U.S. helped evacuate American citizens in the country, Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the war and Afghans whose safety was at risk, the White House said.
Evacuees were flown to third party countries such as Germany for security screenings, according to the video.
Before Afghan evacuees are allowed entry into the U.S., they are vetted by U.S. intelligence, law enforcement and counterterrorism professionals.
Then, once cleared, evacuees are tested for COVID-19 and offered a free vaccine. U.S. citizens who were tested for the virus went home while Afghan refugees are to be temporarily housed at U.S. military bases such as Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey.
Afghan families at the bases will be provided with resettlement services “to help them begin their new lives in the United States,” the White House said.
This comes after a New York Times report found hundreds of current and former students were turned away from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport after seven hours of waiting for security clearance on Sunday.
“We have been trying for two weeks to get our students safe passage into the airport to relocate them to other sites—both branches that we are developing and partner universities, where we can reconvene as a community and start to rebuild and help them recover from the experience that they’ve had,” AUAF President Dr. Ian Bickford told Newsweek.
Bickford said university officials are calling on the U.S. to help evacuate the remaining 1,200 students, staff and relatives out of the country.
“We would have liked to have been prioritized for rescue flights during the two weeks that the U.S. was there,” he said. “Now that that is finished, we believe other options will emerge, but it’s very hard to paint a picture today of what that will look like.”
READ MORE: “Almost 150 American University Students Have Made It Out of Afghanistan”
“These folks are at tremendous risk right now,” he told CNN. “It’s just true that we’re going to have to rely on the Taliban to some extent to allow safe passage for those American citizens to get to the airport, to get to the border to get out of the country. That is just the reality. We can’t do that successfully without some level of coordination. So I think we get our folks out, then we can have the larger conversation about how we’re going to engage in the future, if at all, with the Taliban.”
Crow said he and some of his colleagues will push the Biden administration to try to evacuate all the citizens and allies left in Afghanistan.
“The President is the Commander in Chief,” he added. “He had to balance multiple things and risks. He made the decision to pull out on a deadline. Now we have to focus on what we do to go forward.”
Through “Operation Warm Welcome,” the U.K. will ensure Afghans arriving in the U.K. receive “the vital support they need to rebuild their lives, find work, pursue education and integrate into their local communities.”
People already in the U.K. under the Afghanistan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) will be able to apply to change their temporary leave into indefinite leave, granting them permanent residence in the U.K.
“We owe an immense debt to those who worked with the Armed Forces in Afghanistan and I am determined that we give them and their families the support they need to rebuild their lives here in the UK.,” U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a statement.
The government has allocated £12 million ($16.5 million) for extra school places for Afghans, 300 undergraduate and postgraduate university scholarships and free English courses for adults.
Ramiz Alakbarov, the local U.N. humanitarian coordinator, said about one-third of the country’s population is facing “emergency” or crisis" levels of food insecurity.
“The lean winter season is fast approaching, and without additional funding, food stocks will run out at the end of September,” Alakbarov told The Associated Press.
Alaskbarov said more humanitarian aid is needed.
While the U.N.’s World Food Program has brought in food and distributed it to tens of thousands of people in recent weeks, only about 39 percent of the $1.3 billion needed for aid efforts has been received, he said.
READ MORE: “Afghanistan Food Stocks Will Run Out in September, U.N. Warns, More Aid Needed”
He estimates it is in the “hundreds, possible the mid to low hundred,” he told the Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday.
Raab also said that he “cautioned” that the Taliban were unlikely to engage in dialogue about an inclusive government once the U.S. decision to withdraw troops was clear.
He said the U.K. does “not recognize governments generally” and he does not want to legitimize the insurgents, Sky News reported.
However, he said he does want to continue a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan.
“These are early days and we need to set credible and realistic tests for the Taliban and engage with them based on whether they are following through,” Raab said.
Raab said the U.K anticipated a “steady deterioration” of the situation in Afghanistan.
“The central proposition was given the troop withdrawal by the end of August you would see a steady deterioration from that point,” he said. “It was unlikely Kabul would fall this year.”
He added that the U.K had a contingency plan for a “more rapid deterioration.”
Raab said it was clear at the NATO summit that the partners would “stick to the maxim that NATO went in together” and “would exit together.”
“So if I’m honest with you, I don’t think there was any viable alternative coalition once the US decision had been taken,” he said.
Raab said he was “leaving to go to the region” after this committee hearing but did not provide further details on his trip.
Trump addressed a Facebook post from Shana Chappell, the mother of a fallen soldier blasting President Joe Biden’s conduct during his meeting with families of those killed in Afghanistan last week.
“If I were President, your wonderful and beautiful son Kareem would be with you now, and so would the sons and daughters of others, including all of those who died in the vicious Kabul airport attack,” Trump said.
He said civilians and “our $85 billion of equipment” should have been brought out of Afghanistan first “with the Military coming out very safely after all was clear.”
“European influence will be our greatest challenge,” he said at the Bled Strategic Forum in Slovenia. “We don’t need another Afghanistan to grasp that the European Union (EU) must strive for greater autonomy and capacity for action.”
In order for the EU to work on its strategic autonomy to exert greater influence, Michel said it must work on three key areas.
The EU must work in “bolstering our economic power, reinforcing our neighborhood,” specifically in the Western Balkans, Eastern partnership and Africa, and “reflect openly and clear-eyed on a new stage of collective security and defense capabilities, he said.
“A Qatari jet carrying a technical team has landed in Kabul earlier today to discuss the resumption of operations in the airport,” the source told AFP news agency.
A source familiar with the situation told CNN that “the objective is to resume flights in and out of Kabul for humanitarian assistance and freedom of movement in a safe and secure manner.”
During a meeting with his Dutch counterpart Sigrid Kaag, Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani urged the Taliban to respect women’s rights and ensure safe passage for citizens who want to leave Afghanistan.
“We reiterated to the Taliban that they should carefully review their policies and rhetoric towards women,” he said.
“The Taliban should not back down on what they had promised,” he added. “We have always urged the Taliban to preserve the freedom of movement and to provide safe passage to all citizens, foreign and nationals.”
There was a long line of green, American-made armored vehicles along a highway outside Afghanistan’s second-biggest city, an AFP journalist reported.
Kandahar is the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban.
Many people waved white-and-black Taliban flags attached to aerials and at least one Black Hawk helicopter flew overhead, suggesting a former Afghan army member was at the controls, according to AFP.
He added that the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban is “going to have a huge impact on the struggle between al-Qaeda and the Islamic State” but told journalists not to “jump to conclusions” about the fallout of the situation.
Putin added that “it’s impossible to impose something from outside” and that “if someone does something to someone, they should draw on the history, the culture, the life philosophy of these people in the broadest sense of the word, they should treat their traditions with respect”.
The animals had been in cages at the airport for five days waiting to get on a flight before they were released, the charity claims, after pleas for an animal-friendly airlift failed.
Commenting on the UK-Taliban negotiations, a No10 spokesman told reporters:
The country is seeking reassurances that the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine’s sovereignty in the face of Russia’s seizure of Crimea after Biden’s speech on Afghanistan yesterday, which indicated a move towards isolationism from the Biden administration.
Ahead of the meeting, the White House said it was committing up to $60 million in new military aid to Ukraine, notifying Congress that the aid package was necessary because of a “major increase in Russian military activity along its border” and because of mortar attacks, cease-fire violations and other provocations.
More than 122,000 people were evacuated from Afghanistan during the withdrawal, including more than 116,000 people flown out of the nation over the last two weeks amid the Taliban’s takeover.
FULL STORY: Pentagon Says There’s No ‘Exact Figure’ on Number of Americans Left in Afghanistan
The revelations came after U.S. security sources reportedly asked the U.K. to shut down Abbey Gate before it was attacked - but British officials refused.
The explosion killed almost 200 people, including 13 American soldiers.
“To those asking for a third decade of war in Afghanistan, I ask, ‘What is the vital national interest?’” Biden said. He added, “I simply do not believe that the safety and security of America is enhanced by continuing to deploy thousands of American troops and spending billions of dollars in Afghanistan.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki later defended the comments as a “forceful assessment” of the situation.
READ PRESIDENT BIDEN’S FULL SPEECH HERE
Francis added that “all eventualities were not taken into account” during the withdrawal and evacuations.
Follow Newsweek’s liveblog throughout Wednesday for all the latest.
